Ancient Quote by E. J. W. Barber

The ancient codes were doubtless originally suggested by the discovery and diffusion of the art of writing.

— Henry James Sumner Maine

Written symbols are even more artificial or conventional than spoken; they cannot be picked up in accidental intercourse with others. In addition, the written…

— John Dewey

“I think government starts civilization not writing. In fact why did writing happen in the first place? What happened was bureaucrats were trying to…

— Roy Casagranda

“Before the spread of alphabetic writing, systems making much use of logograms were more common and included Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya glyphs, and Sumerian cuneiform.”

— Jared Diamond

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.

— William Stafford

When I think of the library of Alexandria and of the fact that, although it burnt down, people continue to sort the letters of…

— Alexander Kluge

We have a text before us, an ancient text, a living text, and we try to enter it, not only to decipher it, but…

— Hershel Shanks

“• “To us today, it is tempting to ask why societies with early writing systems accepted the ambiguities that restricted writing to a few…

— Jared Diamond

“Ancient writing was intended to do things, to make people act or believe or change their behavior, not just to entertain them with a…

— Mary Ann Tolbert

Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.

— Ferdinand de Saussure

Anything based on ancient texts is difficult for a modern reader to get their head around.

— Joanne Harris